Human API + Unqork: Using No-Code and Clinical Data Networks to Transform Patient Recruitment

In a Tech Talk for healthcare and life sciences, Unqork and Human API discussed how their partnership is driving innovations in patient recruitment and screening for clinical trials.

Ben Sacchetti, VP of Healthcare at Unqork, and Christian Wieland, Chief Product Officer at Human API, took part in a recent Tech Talk to discuss how the current process for sourcing and screening potential patients for clinical trials can be improved using a no-code approach that integrates a consumer-driven clinical data network.

While the patient recruitment process has undergone improvements over the years through digitization, there are still many pain points for both patients and sites alike. Ben Sacchetti explained that the screening process can be extremely taxing for patients as they often have to delve into their medical history during in-depth interviews and travel to a site that is far from their work or home. Currently, this information gathering takes place before there is a clear read on the patient’s eligibility—resulting in a waste of both the patients’ and sites’ time since many patients turn out to be ineligible for studies.

Sites have to spend a significant amount of time manually assessing whether an individual patient is able to participate. “To do some of that triaging—the time that the site has to wait for patient medical records, for patients to schedule travel, and the time that they have to spend directly on manual research and cross-checking the patient’s file against the protocol—is really significant and often spent on patients who could have been filtered out much earlier,” Ben elaborated. 

The good news is that there is now a better way to streamline patient screening. Leveraging Unqork’s no-code application building platform and Human API’s clinical data network, sites conducting clinical trials can rapidly go to market with their digitized patient recruitment application and automate screening with access to electronic health records (EHR) data. 

No-code capabilities combined with ubiquitous access to digital health data offers sites an opportunity to improve operational burden, screening yield, time to first patient in, and patient and site satisfaction.

Watch the demo of the patient view and the site-to-site coordinator view.

Two areas of opportunity

Christian elaborated on the two capabilities that sites can capitalize on to reduce patient turnover and create a more seamless recruitment process overall. 

Access & leverage electronic health record data at scale

Patients can use their own electronic health record (EHR) data to opt into clinical trials that seem of interest to them and get notified if they qualify. 

“Any one of us might be interested in understanding, ‘Are there clinical trials that would apply to me?’ The idea to actually identify that to a consumer and put them into a trial funnel where they already have shown motivation to do it is a huge accelerant,” Christian explained.

“Any one of us might be interested in understanding, ‘Are there clinical trials that would apply to me?’ The idea to actually identify that to a consumer and put them into a trial funnel where they already have shown motivation to do it is a huge accelerant,” Christian explained. “Patients are able to go through the recruitment funnel more efficiently when sites use EHR data to understand and quickly triage patients without the need for human intervention. This more quickly answers the question, ‘Do they look like they are able to be validated for this trial?’” 

This is done before you take these patients and have them go to sites or get on the phone with call centers, simplifying the recruitment process and decreasing patient attrition.

Run virtual, de-centralized trials

The CRO or site can review the EHR data to determine if the patient can continue on the process with a virtual screening as opposed to an in-person one. There is also less of an administrative burden.

When getting to the last mile of informed consent, patients don’t have to rely on outdated forms of gathering evidence for medical records, such as getting on the phone or sending a fax. Their EHR data houses all that information already.

See how Unqork and Human API can be used at your company and schedule a personalized demo with one of our solutions experts today. Sign for the Unqork newsletter to learn more about the potential of no-code.